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The decision of Courtaulds - the giant fibres-to-textiles monopoly to close seven factories ain over an interi • STOP THE CURS! STRIKE ON NOV 17th just the latest reflection of British capitalism.

The factors that decided Courtauld's management to shut down. these operations are currently confronting every major employer - and the ruthless.

decision to make workers pay with their jobs for the fall in the profitability of the British textile industry is just the forerunner of other such moves by management throughout manufacturing industry as the slump continues to deepen.

In the bare terms of profit and Loss, the closures may make good mathematical sense, though nobody but Courtauld's management has access to any reliable information on that question even Industry Minister Eric Varley has been forced to admit *I am not at all sure that the government has all the facts").

DIRECT ATTACK

But in terms of, the conditions and living standards of the working class, the shut-down of these factories represents a direct attack. And this arrogant move by Courtauld's management is clearly nothing more than the prelude to an all-out offensive for rationalisation and speed-up in every company.

This is not in any way simply vindictiveness or confusion as far as the employers are concerned, despite the whinings of Labour ministers and TUC leaders to that effect.

On the contrary, the employers are forced on by the rocketing rate of interest on investment, which has now reached a staggering 16%. This is now 6% higher than the rate of return from even the most profitable of Courtauld's subsidiaries this year, which are not expected to produce more than 10%. So simply to cut out the least profitable units from the giant firm's 370 factories is nothing but an opener to a brutal imposition of speed-up throughout the remaining plants.

MY JNUD AC the now uncontrolled crisis of An idea of what is required can be seen in the example of the doomed factory at Skelmersdale.There the firm was receiving £20 per employee per week in temporary employment subsidies over the last three months.

CHEAP LABOUR

Shop stewards had already scandalously concluded a longterm commitment to reduce manning levels by 30-40%. This gave the company the prospect of dirtcheap and progressively cheaper labour into the future.

The plant had received continuous government subsidies - an estimated £3 million since 1968, not including regional employment premiums, training payments and other aid.

Yet in announcing the closure of the factory, Courtaulds claimed that the factory "cannot reach commercial viability"

"In addition" , the statement continued, "efforts within the factory to reach internationally competitive levels of productivity by reducing manning levels and increasing flexibility have not proved successful."

If the Skelmersdale plant under all these conditions cannot be macht wellesk worke shane here have of stable employment in the coming period when every employer looks to rationalisation.

Of course we have only the company story to go on.

No elected workers' committee has been given access to the accounts of the Courtauld combine - or even any individual factory threatened with closure.

No worker has had the chance to investigate where the government subsidies went to; what the connection is between the loss making plants and the profit-making whole Courtaulds giant; what the inner workings of the Jones industry reveal.

No trade union leader asks these crucial questions or gives any call whatever apart from the TUC's reactionary, nationalist demand for import controls -which Courtaulds point out would not, in any case, save the doomed seven factories.

And Varley parades his obvious ignorance of the real situation within Courtaulds as an excuse to cover his complete refusal to challenge the right of Courtaulds to throw 4,000 workers onto the dole queues.

GRADUAL EROSION

Indeed such feeble protestations as have come from the government 1s not because they believe in defence of all jobs. On the contrary, their present and impending spending cuts are massively increasing unemployment. But this has been done wherever possible by gradual erosion of jobs - non-replacement, voluntary redundancy and 'natural wastage' with the full collaboration of trade union leaders, rather than grand slam closures like this, carried out in full view of a hostile working class to the acute embarassment of TUC leaders already struggling to maintain the 4½% deal against the wishes of their members.

Courtaulds, however, unlike has just announced that the elections, due next year, will be deferred for another year.

The elections themselves would not have meant an end to the dictatorship because Mrs Ghandi has made it plain that they would take place whilst the "State of Emergency" laws were still operating.

What is clear is that the dictators are scared of allowing any expression of discontent and therefore postponed the elections.

The rising hostility to the dictatorship is such til even the servile Communist Party of India and their British counterparts of the CPGB (who have both gone along with the outlawing of strikes and banning of opposition parties and imprisonment of oppositionists) have protested.

"EXCESSES"

But the Stalinists make sure they only criticise "excesses" of the sterilisation campaign while saying that they didn't think Mrs. Ghandi is ignorant of these excesses.

A typical example of this forced sterilisation campaign is given in the Morning Star. A 20 year old man who went shopping was simply picked up and sterilised. Another example quoted was of water and electricity being cut off from a village because the villagers refused to be sterilised.

Hostility to this enforced sterilisation has led to clashes in which at least 20 people died.

Within India, another section GANDHI of the bourgeoisie around J.P Narayan, which calls for an endin of the State of Emergency ha brought together the various othe bourgeois parties like Alkali Da and the Jan Sangh, in order te consciously divert away from thi class nature of the dictatorship.

In this he has been successfu in pulling in various of the Maois and other left' groups. Ne opposition group of any size ha developed with transitiona demands that connect the over throw of the dictatorship with the fight for socialist revolution.

Foot It goes without saying that the British Labour government has gone along. uncritically with all the dictatorial measures of Mrs. Ghandi, but where are the 'lefts"?

People like Michael Foot and Jennie Lee have visited India Cont'd Back Page Col 5, rage o

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Page 2 SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday 3rd November 1976 A VERS

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